


Right Now The Sunshine

by trajectory



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers Generation One
Genre: Alternate Universe, Chapter Specific Warnings, F/F, M/M, One Shot Collection, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:41:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 10,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27063571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trajectory/pseuds/trajectory
Summary: Day 1. Aileron has a minor mishap. Arcee decides to help.Day 2. In a timeline where she was reared in a very different alien empire, Stardrive feels out of place even among her own kind. Rust Dust wants to know if she’s open to getting to know each other better.Day 3. Stardrive is still adjusting to her new circumstances.Day 4. Jumpstream and Dust-Up try their best to assist in Cybertron’s rebuilding process.Day 5. Needlenose and Horri-Bull keep each other warm on a cold night.Day 6. Strongarm and Minvera go to the big city for the first time.Day 7. Slipstream reacts to being abandoned. Windblade reacts to Slipstream.Day 8. The Aerialbots accept a replacement limb with some struggle and Alpha Bravo takes a leap of faith.
Relationships: Aileron/Arcee (Transformers), Alpha Bravo/Silverbolt (Transformers), Dust Up/Jumpstream (Transformers), Horri-Bull/Needlenose (Transformers), Slipstream/Windblade (Transformers), Stardrive/Rust Dust (Transformers), Strongarm/Minvera (Transformers)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	1. Arcee/Aileron

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: _Intimacy_. 
> 
> Aileron has a minor mishap. Arcee decides to help.
> 
> This was written for the TF Rarepair Week 2020. I’m treating the event as a challenge to try and stick to writing characters/pairings that I haven’t done before. Please forgive the roughness from lack of a beta. This chapter contains showering together, social washing/grooming, and makes references to sexual interfacing and past wartime violence.

“Next time you fall into a toxic tar pit by accident, I’d recommend you try to do it a little closer to the base so we don’t have to get another tow-truck team involved,” Arcee commented brusquely at the beginning, when she sat herself down on the wet floor in front of her lover and hoisted one of Aileron’s legs into her lap to embark on scrubbing with the towel.

“I’ll take care to keep that in mind for the future,” Aileron said in good humor, smiling and relaxed.

She leaned back against the wall and permitted Arcee to work without commentary.

Arcee championed the no-nonsense approach to the tasks she took upon herself (or happened to be assigned to do in the past), including that of taking out the trash (with laser swords and extreme violence) and doing clean-up (disposing of the mess which so commonly resulted from dirty jobs.) Nobody had directed her to handle it this time, but she took it on regardless, with a sponge instead of a sword. 

The two mechs were alone in the washracks. The only sounds were metal flexing and scraping against metal and the dripping of solvent, drumming onto the floor and pooling into puddles and swirling down into the drain, mixed in with white mounds of soapy suds and cleanser. Solvent from the shower head pattered onto face plating. Soft mesh rasped across rounded metal. Steam billowed up in faint clouds, fogging up the air and rising the washrack’s temperature.

Aileron’s entire lower frame was drenched in black up to her shoulders, tar encrusted in a lumpy coating over white, orange, and black plating. More of it splattered onto her face, onto her helmet. It looked foul to be encased in. It smelled foul.

It was a good thing Aileron’s daily routine didn’t include high-priced polishes or the polish would have been stripped off along with the tar and the discolored paint nanites by the chemical Arcee was using. She had soaked several towels in it, dipping them into the filled bucket by her knee, right by the three sponges, the brush, and the scrubber pad, and counting up the minutes, before pulling them out and attacking the black gunk; slathered with the chemicals, the tar began dissolving and became more easily removable. It sloughed off in dark oozing wads. It was a soldier’s trick an old friend had shown her once. Tar was one means among many to slow down an enemy.

Arcee kept half-expecting to find, under the viscous coating, what she would have found on any Cybertronian that had lived through their latest large-scale slagfest war: slight bumps, additional seam lines outlining wrist panels, latches for empty weapon mounts. Telltale giveaways for naturally integrated weaponry or built-in combat mods.

But Aileron was from the colonies.

She hadn’t fought a war.

That was easy to see, in how she talked and how she looked at people. Most colonists turned their backs on strangers with minimal caution. They trusted more easily. They didn’t move like they’re scoping for vulnerable places, automatically checking for which spot to aim a bullet if the other mech attacked, which limb was within grabbing and twisting range. They don’t shut down their fields. They don’t check for the right colored brands. Even the flocks of neutrals were more wary than the colonists were. The wide expanses of Aileron’s plating were smooth, matte surface textured by transformation seams and alt mode kibble alone. Her form wasn’t bulked up by the need for military-grade armor. Her turbines weren’t upgraded to be as effective and swift as they could be to enable her to join in on executing more deadly aerial assaults.

It was a novelty to touch.

Having scooted closer so her legs comfortably bracketed Aileron’s hips, its white ridges pressing against the inner sides of Arcree’s thighs, and working her first pass up those smooth flanks and past Aileron’s midsection, Arcee ran the towel over the inviting curve of Aileron’s broad, rounded chassis, taking care on the rims of the headlights. 

Mouth twitching, Aileron smothered a small noise. Her fans switched on, only to gurgle to a halt. 

Arcee paused, trying to track why the sounds—the favorable reaction—she was after were being drawn up short. It became clear why just as the fans accelerated for a brief moment, then jammed and stopped again. Aileron’s chest vents and side vents for air filtration must have irately reminded her that they were currently clogged with foreign muck and it wasn’t wise to risk overheating herself until they were cleaned. Aileron’s yellow optics dimmed in frustration, wings dipping.

Taking pity and putting aside her own excess charge, Arcee relented. An activity to be saved for later then. She changed her target and moved onto the tar thickly gumming up Aileron’s left arm, well past the elbow joint. Arcee gripped her arm, pulling it towards her. Aileron let out an imperceptible huff and cooperated.

Aileron extended her hand, blunt fingers clumsily spreading out, the finger joints impossible to make out under the tar and difficult to bend.

At this angle, with that movement, armor gaped open and Arcee was treated to the exposed sight of the intricate gears and internal mechanisms joining Aileron’s hand to her forearm and her armor to her shoulder turbine, grey joints bare and vulnerable.

Evidence for the case: _I do not fear you_. Aileron might not have known her back in the height of her fighting days or during the war, but she was intelligent. She relied on her own gut feelings. Aileron knew what people who carried around laser swords everywhere they went could do with the swords. Not every mech who avoided Arcee did so just because she was rude and ill-socialized and had trouble remembering to contort her face so when she smiled at people, she did it in a manner that didn’t make them wonder if she was thinking of using their internals to paint the side of a dark alleyway somewhere.

Aileron could connect the dots.

And Arcee refused to lie when Aileron asked questions. The upper ranks on both sides did enough lying when it came to the colonies, Vector Sigma knew she didn’t need to add to the pile.

Still: the exposed joints, the empty washracks, the consistent choice to seek and share proximity in these private quarters. Intimacy. _I know that you are capable of harm, that you have done harm, and I am continuing to trust you will not give me cause to fear that capacity will be turned on me._

Arcee turned Aileron’s arm over and washed the underside with steady strokes.


	2. Stardrive/Rust Dust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt: _First Meeting_.
> 
> In a timeline where she was reared in a very different alien empire, Stardrive feels out of place even among her own kind. Rust Dust wants to know if she’s open to getting to know each other better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains attempts to get laid, awkward flirting, bigotry/prejudice, a character having trauma and poor self-image due to past mistreatment, and implied sexual interfacing. It also mentions Quintessons being awful, past enslavement, past experimentation on sentient beings, past non-consensual body modifications, and past kidnapping and canon-typical violence.

The techno-organic Camien they had recused during one of their raids on the Quintesson Imperium’s outposts when they unexpectedly stumbled across her cell was a suspicious and half-feral creature who kept her chin tucked in and watched everybody who came within twenty meters of her with distrusting optics.

She was also, in Rust Dust’s seasoned opinion, attractive. Incredibly so.

“The Quintessons had her locked up for _seventy years_.” Skyburst filled in as the token voice of concerned reason, over a drink in their team’s quarters. Her rotors flicked. Aw, her gestalt-mate had her spark in the right place. Not that Rust Dust was going to listen to her one bit. “Those _slavers_ abducted her as a sparkling. Them and their experiments are all she’s ever been exposed to. She’s in a strange place, filled with customs she doesn’t understand and people she doesn’t know. That’s not going to make her inclined towards a hook-up.”

“Then somebody ought to be taking steps to make her feel welcome instead of a stranger,” Rust Dust argued. “By the Forge, how’s Stardrive ever going to feel comfortable with her own kind if half the mechs around her act like she’s too _unclean_ to go near?”

Skyburst’s visor sobered. “Rust Dust…”

“Tell me I’m wrong. You don’t have to be diplomatic about it.”

The attitude towards organics in the Cybertronian alliance’s ranks varied. 

There was no monolith of opinions.

There were trends. One could find many faction members who ranged from the casually disinterested to the tolerant and accepting of organics and their right to lives free from oppression, for if it was wrong to mistreat Cybertronians for being born mechanical life forms, it was wrong to mistreat the organics for being born biological organisms. A few subscribed to the benevolent but insultingly condescending stance that organics needed to be not exterminated but protected because their meat brains sadly weren’t advanced enough to take care of themselves. 

The recruits from the colonies and the neutrals, especially the ones from the outer rim, who had commercial enterprises and trading agreements with interstellar businesses staffed by organics, had their fair share of xenophobia but overall slanted towards the more positive side of the issue, in that other species had the right to be left unharassed, and if an organic attacked a mech, the mech had just as much of a right to defend themselves by stepping on them. Organics offered market access to giant robots more often if the giant robots didn’t routinely express views about their fleshy repulsiveness aloud.

But on the opposite end of the scale, no small number of Cybertronians had beliefs about organic inferiority indistinguishable from technoism. Decepticons listed technoism as part of their party platform, a policy openly accepted and endorsed by Megatron. The Cybertronian civil war had remained confined to the Hadean system, a solar system populated entirely by mechanicals, so Optimus Prime’s alliance-wide mandate that organics who aren’t the warring Quintessons were be treated the same as mechanical non-combatants (a condition of his signature being put on the truce treaty, _not_ open to debate, don’t even _think_ about trying, Megatron or that fusion cannon was going to be jammed up where the sun doesn’t shine) for the duration of the current conflict rendered it a tactical moot point anyway. 

Quintessons weren’t just despised for being techno-organic five-faced scum; they were despised universally for being slavers. Quintessons were one of the only three species in the galaxy who hadn’t banned slavery in the boundaries of their systems. Their opportunistic invasion of their warring neighbor in a scheme to catch the Cybertronians off-guard and bulk out their legions of chattel with Cybertronians had served to further sour already-dead relations.

All of this was to say: Stardrive had been dumped into a situation that didn’t know what to do with her.

The Autobots looked at Stardrive like she was puzzling, out-of-place, saddening like seeing the only survivor of a five-car pile-up traffic accident was saddening. But at least most Autobots and the neutrals rightfully saw her as a victim, who hadn’t asked to be made the way she was. A not-insignificant number of Decepticons and some of the Autobots looked at her like she was dirty, disgusting, an animal to be put down rather than a person.

It ground Rust Dust’s gears, was what it did.

Stardrive had been through hell and came out the other side swinging. Rust Dust had been with Prya Magna in a different part of the outpost at the time and missed meeting her when Stardrive had been rescued, but according to Dust-Up, Jumpstream had been the gestalt-mate to open her cell, under the mistaken impression it was empty. Rather than cringe in the shadows at the back of the room, Stardive had lunged forward like a demon straight out of the Pit and ripped Jumpstream’s arm off at the shoulder, spraying energon onto the ceiling. 

She hadn’t been fed by the Quintesson jailers in almost a week and hunger had been driving her mad. It had taken Dust-Up and the twins together to subdue her. And she’d fought them the whole way down.

Stardrive wasn’t somebody to be pitied. She was a survivor, the way those mechs who had once struggled each day to make ends meet in the tiny mining towns that had littered Caminus’ frigid frontier were. Her resilience deserved respect. Stardrive was scarred and embittered and _changed_ , but her will wasn’t broken.

From Rust Dust’s preceptive, those physical changes didn’t lessen her appeal. 

Rust Dust had a weakness for ‘tall and capable’—yes, okay, okay, bigger partners was a common kink if one fell into the minibot weight class like Rust Dust did, but she defied anybody who spent most of their days with Pyra Magna to have _not_ entertained dirty thoughts about big bots and their proportionally sized interface arrays—and Stardrive hit those buttons. With a hammer. A good face, framed by sharp teal armor points, a straight nose. _And_ a triple changer. Rust Dust had no objections to discovering if those biomechanical tendrils that Dust-Up mentioned she’d lashed out with could be turned to other uses. Or those extra mouths. Or those serrated claws. Alien? Yes. Disgusting? No. Rust Dust thought it was hot. She was drawn to the unknown. Her gestalt-mates knew this well. She didn’t need orders to take a risk. She _liked_ risk. She rushed ahead without waiting for instructions or more information. She kicked up scraps and plunged headlong into trouble.

If nobody else wanted to call first dibs on a newcomer, too bad. That was their loss, not hers.

Stardrive took a stool at the bar counter in the base’s bar twice a week like clockwork, before the evening rush, and left once the crowds flooded in. Today Rust Dust ignored the four other empty stools and clambered up onto the stool next to Stardrive. Her legs were too short to reach the bar floor from up here and dangled, curved tips pointed downward. Stardrive twisted sideways on her stool to stare.

“What do you want?” Stardrive asked, suspicion stamped over her face.

“You,” Rust Dust said. “More specifically, I’d like to buy you a drink and get to know you better.”

Stardrive’s suspicion turned into confusion. “What?”

Rust Dust forged onward. “Is that a ‘what, go away, I want to drink in peace’ or a ‘what, I wouldn’t mind some close company?’ I won’t mind if it’s the former.”

Stardrive might tower over the minibot who had invited herself into the seat next to her, but Stardrive plainly had no script for this situation at hand or which social cues she was supposed to be interpreting. “Are… Are you _hitting_ on me?” She glanced right and left, as if she was uncertain whether this was a prank and somebody else was filming them to see the look on Stardive’s face when the punchline hit and made her look like a fool. She acted like somebody who was overtly accustomed to having the rest of her immediate surroundings against her just for having the gall to exist. Rust Dust’s resolve to be welcoming firmed to the same density as steel. Stardrive’s voice turned defensive. “That is what you Cybertronians say to each other when you’re hoping to convince someone to—to clang with you, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Rust Dust pronounced. “Are you interested?” She asked, laying out each syllable with care.

“I, um, well,” Flustered, Stardrive looked away. A blush darkened her cheeks.

Rust Dust patiently didn’t push.

Stardive turned back to face her. Defensiveness lingered in her words. “Why are you interested in me to begin with anyway? There are other people in this bar. Do you even know who I am?”

“I was on the team that raided the Quintesson outpost you were held in. Kinda hard not to know who you are.”

Stardrive sucked in air through her filtration vents so abruptly they cut off with a thin whistle. “Oh.” A spike of anxiety wormed through her field. Her claws tightened around the nearly-emptied cube she clasped. “I don’t remember you. You weren’t the one I attacked?”

“You’re thinking of Jumpstream. She’s fine. They rebuilt her arm. And we’re gestalt, I know she doesn’t hold it against you. I’m Rust Dust, I was somewhere else in the outpost. I didn’t see you. This is the first time we’ve met properly.”

Seemingly relieved that her and Rust Dust’s first meeting hadn’t been marked by a starvation-crazed murder attempt, Stadrive ducked her chin. Honesty showed through the uncertain, prickly bearing she tightened around herself like a second layer of armor. “I’m… glad your friend is recovering. I don’t want to be responsible for more needless loss of life. Not anymore.”

“Thanks. I’ll pass it along,” Rust Dust replied.

“So. Back to the question. If you know who I am, why are you trying to hit on me?”

Swinging her slender legs in the air, Rust Dust leaned back, the light from the distillery’s glowing cylinders gleaming off the transparent black glass of her windshield, and her openly admiring bright blue visor met Stardrive’s yellow optics.

“Hey. Why not? Fortune favors the bold. What’s wrong with flirting with somebody beautiful like you?”

Startled, Stardrive jerked back like she had whacked her with a battering ram, plating bristling up and parts of her armor roiling in a distinctively biological way.

“I _mean_ ,” Rust Dust hastily held up her hands. Maybe she was being too forward? Was she coming on too strong? She tried to not trip over her words, “You are. I hope it’s too much to believe somebody would find you beautiful, Stardrive?”

Stardrive recovered. She gazed down into her drink. The shimmering liquid reflected her pale face back at her. She said slowly, “The Quintessons looked down on me for being too much of a machine. The Cybertronians look down on me for being too much of an organic,” she burst out, “It’s not like I can _help_ not being one or the other!” She paused. “Not all of them. Not Velocity. Flatline. Or Jazz. They’re… trying to be kind.”

At that moment, she looked desperately lonely anyway.

Rust Dust put a hand on the bar counter beside Stardrive’s nearly-empty cube, inches of empty space remaining between her and Stardrive’s hands. “I saw the inside of that outpost. After a place like that? You more than deserve kindness.”

Pulling herself up from her reverie, Stardrive tilted her helm and displayed a sense of humor. “And a clang or two?”

Rust Dust laughed. “Only if you let me buy you a drink first. I wasn’t built in a shack. I have manners.” She added hopefully, “You could use the fuel for later, if you’re free tonight?”

And she recognized the stirrings of hunger in Stardrive’s optics for what it was. 

Stardrive felt alienated from the crowds of people around her. But she was also lonely and desperate, starved even, for any form of meaningful communication, even if it was just the communication of physical intimacy, of two bodies moving together and a shared desire. At it being freely offered to her, hunger scented an opening and rose to the surface.

Stardrive nodded, “I’m free. My usual is a Nightmare Fuel.” She hesitated and confessed, “I haven’t flirted with anybody seriously before. For fun.” Rust Dust assumed being strapped down to a Quintesson’s experiment table put a massive damper on a mech’s dating life. “What’s the protocol? Should I be letting you pick what drink to buy me?”

Rust Dust whistled, “No, it’s fine. You’re doing fine. _That’s_ your usual? Wow. Wonder if you could drink Dust-Up under the table or not. Usually only Pyra Magna can manage that.” She scooted forward on her stool and leaned over the bar counter to signal the bartender. She showed two fingers. “One Nightmare Fuel and one Flaming Hammer, coming right up!”


	3. Stardrive/Rust Dust: Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt: _Memory_.
> 
> Stardrive is still adjusting to her new circumstances. Some old scars are yet to fully close up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter contains the morning after, post-cordial cuddling, NSFW mentions of sex, body horror, and techno-organic tentacles, and a character continuing to have major self-image/self-esteem issues after being subjected to Quintesson awfulness.

Sunlight from the brightening sky outside slanting through the circular window woke her.

Plagued by old corrupted files, her processor hissed grainy static and stalled for a long minute as it tried to make sense of what primitive instincts continued to classify as unfamiliar—and due to its unfamiliarity, as _dangerous_ —struggling to render the blocks of color and interlocking areas of light and dark into real objects, with outlines and solid mass. A low-priority proximity warning beeped. She tensed, wariness coiling up in her core. The light pooling richly across the berth and flooding across the floor was yellow from the dawn, not a sickly scarlet. The window was open. A breeze unfurled from it to touch her face. The room was large and there was furniture in it. A workstation occupied a wall. It wasn’t the featureless cell from her memories. There was a washracks attached to the room, not a drain in the corner of the floor to empty her waste tank into. There was a door and it wasn’t locked. (Jazz had promised her the Cybertronian alliance wouldn’t put a lock on her door that she didn’t have the access codes to.)

Stardrive relaxed. Her mind caught up with her present. She was free.

She was done with cells.

Done with jailers.

Stardrive yawned, fanged jaws unhinging and her mouth gaping unnaturally wide.

Her systems hummed, like all of her cables had been freshly cleaned, like a sated animal that had eaten its fill and licked up the leftover vital fluids and wished now to do no more than laze about. 

There was a pleasantly sore ache from both parts of her private array, the details of the previous lively night were embossed into her memory banks in high resolution for later review, and her biomechanical parts spilled out messily over the recharge slab from where she normally tucked them away so the Cybertronians would stop looking at her strangely. Tendrils snaked around her berth partner’s red and teal limbs. The smaller Cybertronian sprawled over her chest, atop the closed seams of the secondary mouth under the windshield in her midsection, was still asleep. Dried transfluids crusted between her narrow hips. It had been satisfying to push her glossa into a minibot’s valve and lick into the wet folds until Rust Dust yowled and the hands holding her helm down tightened.

Not possessed by the urge to sit up yet, Stardrive’s half-shuttered optics groggily watched Rust Dust sleep on.

Mm. She had neglected to transform her arm back before falling into recharge. It was a long, organically fluid extension of black biomechanical tentacles, deformed claws, and spiked metal wrapped together, riddled with biolight patterns, draped over Rust Dust’s back, coiled into the gaps in her armor and cradling her close. Stardrive concentrated. Her arm shifted. It retreated, releasing Rust Dust. Serrated spikes receded and her arm was standard again.

She flexed her hand.

The claws protruding from her feet and studding her shoulders followed suit and sank into their standard arrangement with slithery noises.

Stardrive stroked a hand down Rust Dust’s back.

Wobbly engine purrs were her reward.

Somehow Stardrive had expected to wake up alone. Cynicism produced by a lifetime of callous treatment had seethed in the bottom of her core, once the pleasure had climaxed and the best of the lingering afterglow had trickled away, coaching her to lie there in the dark and silently dwell on the worst case scenarios. What if Rust Dust’s admiration had been faked and she had just wanted to give clanging the Quintesson-made freak a go for the bragging rights and not stick around afterwards?

Defying her fears, Rust Dust was still here.

Stardrive found herself hoping Rust Dust would be up for a second round.

Clanging Rust Dust wasn’t the same as clanging Skimmer. The memory-files skittered unasked to the forefront of her processor, coming from the same shadowy damage in her code that always made her tense up and expect to see the cell instead of her room in those first bleary seconds of consciousness, that made her avoid the medbay with its sterility and its shelves of uncomfortable-looking equipment. 

Skimmer. An old wound. 

They had coupled sometimes to assert their survival as something real and _tangible_ , during the rare times they were in the same cell block, defiant proof that they were more than the tools their handlers had viewed them as. It had been one of their private rebellions. Their refusal to let the Quintessons stop them from grubbing for joy from existence. Skimmer had been Stardrive’s height. She’d been taken in the same raid on a Cybertronian colony (Camion? Camius? Sometimes one of the Cybertronians referred to her as a Camien colonist, but Stardrive couldn’t identify with a home she didn’t remember) as Stardrive. Her visor had been red.

(Skimmer hadn’t made it out like Stardrive had.)

Stardrive pushed the memories back down.

That was then. 

This was now.

Rust Dust stirred and made noises, about to wake up. Stardrive petted the side of her helm and moved forward to see if she could interest Rust Dust in making another new memory.


	4. Jumpstream/Dust-Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt: _Misunderstanding _.__
> 
> __Jumpstream and Dust-Up try their best to assist in Cybertron’s rebuilding process._ _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jumpstream’s profile on TFwiki mentions she has the ability to teleport. No media she’s appeared in shows her using this random ability but I thought it was a neat concept. This chapter contains mild humor, bricks in the wrong location, an established relationship, and kissing.

“No, sorry,” Dust-Up said somewhat apologetically to Beachcomber. “It’s a common misunderstanding. My conjunx’s teleportation ability doesn’t work like Skywarp’s teleportation.”

“Objects are out of the question then?” Beachcomber said, in the forlorn tone of somebody having the inklings of what a migraine sorting out the problem that had landed in their lap by sheer mishap would be. His shoulder wheels drooped. The massive pile of bricks that had been delivered to the wrong rebuilding site in the rubble-strewn expanse that had once been Uraya sat on the ground in front of them and looked discouragingly heavy. 

The bricks were stacked up taller than Jumpstream’s helm.

Jumpstream grimaced, the expression crinkling the red markings on her cheeks. She would love it if she could solve their plight so neatly. “No objects, no organics. Watch. You can see for yourself.” She heaved up a brick from the stacks placed by the main entrance of the two-story building’s scaffolding. She looked upwards and activated her warp drive.

The world _lurched_ , blurred into the whirling teal and green that came with a short teleport, resolved. 

(The longer the distance Jumpstream teleported, the warmer the colors that branded themselves onto the backs of her optical sensors morphed. A teleport she could measure in the length of a few feet brought a deep, dappled blue. A few yards brightened to a hue nearly the same sweet blue as Dust-Up’s optics. A mile made her vision dance with sweltering orange and at two miles bright red streamed past her like she was shoving her face into the fiery insides of a forge.) 

Jumpstream stood on the unfinished roof. She leaned over the edge and saw Dust-Up hop forward to catch the brick in both hands as it dropped from where it had been left suspended in the air for an instant after she warped away. “Up here, Beachcomber! Dust!” Jumpstream called. Dust-Up freed a hand and gave her a thumbs up. She put the brick back in the pile. Beachcomber craned his neck back until his white optics landed on Jumpstream. He acknowledged her with a wave. She waved back and then winked out of sight.

Her teleportation dropped her back where she’d been standing.

She addressed Beachcomber. “If it doesn’t have a spark, I can’t teleport it, and even then, there’s limits. If it’s a species that’s powered by their sparks, I can’t teleport a mech with a greater mass than myself. And I can only teleport to somewhere I can see.” 

“If Skywarp can teleport inanimate objects and to anywhere he knows the coordinates for, do you know the reason why you can’t?” Beachcomber asked, curiosity winning out over his impending headache.

Jumpstream counted the reasons off on her fingers. “Caminus and Cybertron both developed warp technology. Caminus’ energy shortage meant we had less resources to devote to the research, the loss of contact with the homeworld meant our technology was bound to drastically diverge _anyway_ , and eventually the project was abandoned and I was one of the group who received the limited end product. They didn’t have updates for it queued up.” 

“There was no war to put on the pressure to perfect it. That’s why Jumpstream’s warp device is less advanced and less powerful than Skywarp’s version of it. But she doesn’t let that stop her!” said Dust-Up.

Beachcomber mused, “You call it less advanced, but you’ve never mentioned having malfunctions from it. Meanwhile, Skywarp’s teleportation shorts out every other century with a new glitch and he gets grounded in Shockwave’s lab for days while they fix it.”

Dust-Up’s field rippled. “We built in more safeguards before trying to install it on an actual person. The Cybertronian scientists who put that drive in him didn’t.”

“You would’ve had a _spark attack_ in the waiting room, worrying about me volunteering for the installation without those safeguards,” Jumpstream teased, nudging her through the gestalt bond. “And then where would we be?”

“It goes without saying you’d be lost without me, sweetspark.”

Jumpstream clapped a hand on the headlight on her shoulder covering and affectionately pecked the side of Dust-Up’s red mask. “‘Course. Solus knows how many scares you’ve given _me_ by accident when you get riled up and dash ahead of your own wheels. I was just making up for lost time in giving you a scare of my own once or twice. Risk keeps us on our toes.”

“If you start quoting Pyra Magna’s training maximums about rising to meet challenges as they come at me, I’m quitting this conversation, just a head’s up,” protested Dust-Up, the anxieties of hovering outside the door as Jumpstream underwent the surgery so far in the past that she could accept joking about it in the present. “But fair’s fair.”

Dust-Up pressed her mask against Jumpstream’s face in a kiss. 

She turned to Beachcomber. “These bricks shouldn’t be here. That means there’s a construction site in Uraya somewhere that’s wondering why some of its materials have gone missing. We can’t teleport the bricks to them, but do you want the Torchbearers to track them down? There’s four of us in Uraya. It’d be a quick errand for us.”

“Would you?” Beachcomber looked relieved at the volunteer assistance. “We’re already behind schedule on this building. I can have the bricks loaded back into a transport while you find out the destination they were supposed to be sent to.”

“Yeah. We’re on it,” Dust-Up agreed. “Jumpstream?”

“One shortcut to the others, as requested.” Jumpstream held her conjunx tight and activated her warp drive. The world _jerked_ and dissolved into a swirl of bright green.


	5. Needlenose/Horri-Bull

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt: _Proffered_.
> 
> Needlenose and Horri-Bull keep each other warm on a cold night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains NSFW/plug and play sexual interfacing, kinda huddling for warmth, cheesy flirting, cuddling, size difference, and mentions of sticky sexual interfacing. Author’s first attempt at writing plug’n’play.

The communication station on the outskirts of the Mithril Sea was desolate, in the manner that secluded places abandoned by its former inhabitants to be ravaged by the elements so frequently were, and hadn’t seen a maintenance crew in years. Rust discolored the keyboard corners. The power grid for the overhead lighting was broken. The communication array that the station had built around was missing everything except its weathered base, dismantled and carried away by scavengers on the hunt for sellable parts. But the station had an intact roof and the drafty interior was warmer than the inhospitable outside, so it suited the lone Decepticon squad just fine as somewhere to recharge and avoid the oncoming darkness. 

Not many people relished being caught at night shivering and without shelter in the middle of Cybertron’s brief but brutal dark season. Days shortened. Nights lengthened. Temperatures dropped swiftly as Cybertron teetered through the point in its orbit that took it furthest from the local star.

It was part tradition, part survival tactic, to shutter the windows and bunk down to wait it out.

The Decepticons had carried enough subspaced fuel with them to last days in a pinch. Searching through secluded corridors and cabinets with buckled-in panels uncovered dusty piles of equipment. But a cache of out-dated miniature generators stacked up atop each other in a box in one of the supply closets was the real jackpot. They lugged them back to the central room. 

One Decepticon replaced burnt-out power cells and brought the generators blazing to life, throwing off heat and bright yellow light. The shadows on the concrete walls danced. Needlenose snatched one up and let the rest of the squad fight about the others. He and Horri-Bull had one of the station’s berthrooms. It wasn’t big. A glorified hole in the wall. Icy chill wafted in from the cracks in the ceiling. A rickety bunk had collected dust on one side of the room and there was floor space for a chair on the other side and not much else. 

The generator sputtered and buzzed, straining to fill the cold cramped space with heat. Needlenose had dumped it onto the chair seat and thumbed its switch on, eager to not be sitting in the dark.

Or taking up the invitation of snuggling up to somebody big and running hot that Horri-Bull proffered.

Settled down on Horri-Bull’s lap, Needlenose leaned in further and nuzzled at him again. Horri-Bull only had a mouth in his alt mode and not his root mode so kissing intake-to-intake did nothing for the other Decepticon. Nuzzling masks like this were mostly about foreplay.

Needlenose’s hand stroked down Horri-Bull’s side, touching the ports left open by retracted panels, and tugged on the tangle of cables invitingly hanging out, fingers fondling the jacks. Horri-Bull groaned deep in his throat. 

Needlenose possessed two connector cables, one interface cable, and one medical cable; Horri-Bull was gifted with a differing set-up of one connector cable, two interface cables, and two medical cables. 

The equipment was sensitive, each cable capable of sustaining electronic connections for prolonged time periods and exchanging data, and fun to play with, but it was the interface cables that were specialized for tonight’s activity of hardlining and fragging each other’s processors out. Needlenose gripped an interface cable, rubbing over the delicate wiring under the segmented surface, wringing a strangled noise from his partner and Horri-Bull’s hands tightening their grip on his hips, before pulling the cable towards his own exposed receiving port.

The cable’s tip pressed inside. Wings slanting at a jaunty angle, Needlenose’s sensory network reported throbbing pleasure as the connection burst online between them and Horri-Bull’s questing data pulses raced like fire down the line and knocked into his systems as soon as Needlenose granted him access. Needlenose picked up and plugged the second cable into another port, charge rising as the amount of the data he was receiving increased.

“You’re eager,” Needlenose muttered.

“ _Frag yeah_ I am. I want to ‘face you ‘til your circuits pop and you squeal like a petro-rabbit, Needle. Then I want to _keep going_. I want to feel you in me. Plug me.”

Needlenose’s field shuddered. “Ohh, you don’t know what it does to me. Hearing you talk like that to me.” Horri-Bull snorted, _yeah right_ and put out a hand. 

Needlenose promptly popped the panels over his own hatches, uncoiling his lone interface cable and offering it to Horri-Bull. His fans whirred louder, watching hungrily as Horri-Bull grabbed it and slid it home in the corresponding port on his side. Charge crackled. Reciprocal links established, the connection stabilized and their systems started syncing. 

Once it had been a scramble to make their programs align during interfacing but they had practice at it now. Needlenose gasped and pulsed energy hard through the completed link.

Beneath him, Horri-Bull’s frame vibrated and lust rode in those red optics. The energy mingled with Horri-Bull’s unfiltered affection and rebounded through him. Clips of memories came back with it, Horri-Bull pinging him with good times they had together, the sensual faces Needlenose made when Horri-Bull’s spike thrust into him, the sensory input from pressure of his hands on the hinges of Needlenose’s wings. Aroused and greedy, Needlenose ground against him and responded with a surge of _yes need want good_ and tidbits from his memory banks. His hands around Horri-Bull’s spike while Horri-Bull was on his knees, his cables jacked into Horri-Bull’s ports, their roadtrip trip to Kalis, and the day he’d joined the faction and, and Horri-Bull had been the one to first congratulate him, and, and, and!

There was plenty of data to choose from and share, but the data flow became increasingly fast and nonsensical the nearer to a climax Needlenose climbed.

Overload seized him. 

Needlenose made an embarrassingly shrill noise. His back arched, the sudden movement pulling at the cables joining them. His vision fragmented. Horri-Bull’s climax followed even less quietly.

“How many more overloads do ya’ think I can squeeze out of you tonight?” Horri-Bull wrapped his arms around his midsection, snuggling him as close as he could on the berth. 

Their kibble didn’t slot perfectly together. Some wiggling on both of their parts was required to keep protrusions from jabbing into uncomfortable spots. 

“M- _mm_! Good question,” Needlenose rested his palms flat on Horri-Bull’s plating. “It’s really cold during this time of year, even if we’re inside. We’ll need to stay close all night to keep warm and not wake up with frozen joints,” Needlenose pushed himself forward and reached a hand past Horri-Bull’s helm and rubbed one of the purple horns sticking up from his back kibble. “Is there any better reason to spend as much time as we can finding out the answer?”

“I’m liking your train of thought,” Horri-Bull said and sat him back down on his lap. He tweaked the edges of a wing. Needlenose pressed his pelvic plating against him, air puffing from his vents. Horri-Bull brought Needlenose’s charge cycling up for another round from where it had been simmering by jolting him with a crackling shot of lust zigging down the cables. “I’m liking it a _lot_.”


	6. Strongarm/Minvera

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt: _Mayhem_.
> 
> Strongarm and Minvera go to the big city for the first time. Strongarm tries not to be too distracted by people flouting the rules of the road and forgetting to use their turn signal. Minerva has a case of pre-interview jitters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pre-war setting. I thought of them as being the Cybertronian equivalent of young adults here.

The metropolis was pure mayhem. Anarchy in the streets. 

People weren’t obeying the traffic code. Sky-sleds were left parked unattended on the sidewalks, obscuring the passage of anyone trying to go past them. Pedestrians didn’t keep to the designated crosswalks and wandered across the jam-packed roads and dodged through the traffic lanes like it was part of their daily routine and cars often didn’t slow down to let them pass. Strongarm had seen four grounders casually run a red light in the last hour and _nobody had ticketed them_. And turn signals seemed to be an _optional_ whim, instead of the very least courtesy you could give to your fellow drivers. Had none of them heard of basic driving etiquette? Had their mentors neglected to teach them properly? Horns honked. Alarms trilled. Music played. The airspace was crowded with flying transports. 

In their rural hometown, which only had one underground level and three above-surface levels, such a racket would take place during a festival and last a couple days. 

But here, this volume of noise held constant year round. 

Last night Strongarm had found her recharge hampered by the lights shining through the closed window curtains and traffic rumbling below like an unending deluge of soft thunder. Minerva had recharged like a rock next to her, exhausted from a last-minute studying session. Strongarm was too accustomed to drifting off in the dark to the sounds of the house creaking around her and the quiet scurrying and scratching of techanimal vermin outside.

It was background noise one learned to tune out if you lived in the city’s warrens long enough, Strongarm supposed. After she and Minvera left the hotel they had booked rooms in, Strongarm tried to set her jaw and look calm and prepared and not gawk at the skyscrapers so tall they disappeared in the misty clouds and the array of glowing signs and advertisements. She wasn’t here to be a… a tourist. She was here as moral support.

Minerva was as overwhelmed as she was.

She maintained a death grip on Strongarm’s hand as they disembarked from the hoverbus and onto the campus’ bus station. Shuffling out of the way of the assorted mechs boarding, Minerva nervously double-checked the map. Minerva in the lead, they exited the station and followed the map’s directions to the entrance of a corridor that would take them to the nearest elevator lift. The university campus was arranged vertically, occupying eight successive levels of the city’s upper heights like the layers of an overstuffed gel pastry, one stacked atop another. The top two layers were open to the sky.

A barrier of criss-crossed hazard tape and an electronic sign at the corridor entrance informed them that the nearest elevator was **OUT OF ORDER. UNDER CONSTRUCTION. GO SOMEWHERE ELSE.**

Strongarm clapped a hand to her forehead.

The elevator doors were closing when they arrived at the second-nearest lift, a _considerably_ farther distance away, but the university student already standing in the elevator, looking up from his mug of something that bubbled and smelled like it was medically inadvisable to digest and seeing the two mechs shouting and breaking out into a sprint towards him, the sporty red racer in alt mode, the burly white and blue car in root mode and waving an arm commandingly, jabbed the button to keep them open. 

Minerva and Strongarm piled in, wheezing. The doors slid shut. 

Strongarm hit the button for their level. The elevator lift started to raise.

“In a rush to be somewhere?” he asked.

“I’m here for an interview,” Minerva said and transformed to her root mode. “I don’t want to be late.”

The student took a gulp from his mug. “Ahhh. Mystery solved. Best of luck. Hope the faculty don’t eat you for lunch.” The elevator lift halted. _Ding_. The student stepped off at the third level. The elevator lift rose again, smoothly and surely. The elevator lift halted again. _Ding_.

Minerva and Strongarm stepped off. 

The elevator doors closed at their backs.

The domed central building of Protihex Medical Mechanics University loomed above them.

Strongarm picked up a sudden clattering noise. She glanced down. Minerva wasn’t saying anything, but her plating was rattling slightly, her ankles knocking together. Her audial antennas sleeked back.

In a huge strange city with only one familiar face for miles and faced with the imposing reality of visiting the legendary building where some of the greatest medics from recorded history had been trained in person and to which she had aspired to be trained in herself ever since Minvera had set her spark on the medical field for the first time, no wonder Minvera was intimidated. She had taken all her previous classes at the modest education facility in their hometown. Which was nothing like this. Strongarm reached out and gripped her hand. It trembled.

“You’ve gotten through the primary application, the secondary application, you have the letters of recommendation from Lifeline and the others. You met every prerequisite in the rulebook,” Strongarm recited. “I’ve checked. You’ve earned this. This is the last step in the enrollment protocol. You can do this.” Strongarm squeezed Minvera’s hand. “I _know_ you can do it.”

After a few moments, the trembling in Minvera’s fingers died away.

“Thanks, Strongarm.” Minvera squared her shoulders and cycled in a deep vent. “I can handle this interview. And afterwards, we’re going out and celebrating at the cafe down at the spaceport that Lifeline told us about.”

“Yes. We’ll be celebrating your successful acceptance to the university,” Strongarm predicted firmly.

Minerva lifted her chin up. 

“Right. Just the two of us.”

She and Strongarm walked onwards to the Protihex Medical Mechanics University’s front door.


	7. Slipstream/Windblade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt: _Devotion_.
> 
> Slipstream reacts to being abandoned. Windblade reacts to Slipstream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains canon-typical violence, vaguely implied Decepticon drama in the background, and robots being nemeses.

Their chase veered away from the battlefield outside the power plant and went past forests and telephone lines and trees and the towering hefts of gray clouds in the skies, ripe with the potential for rain. The pursuit was brought to an end on the ground when Slipstream whipped herself in a flurry of speed and moving parts out of alt mode and slammed Windblade out of the air, careening her into a depilated building that rose out of the fog banks. 

They smashed through the roof with a deafening _crack_ , and downward momentum carried them through multiple stories, support beams snapping like twigs under their shared bulk, and in a deluge of dust and broken wood into the basement. The impact made the house rattle and bits of debris came loose off the walls. Rubble pinged onto her helmet, tumbled down her wings. Windblade changed modes too, preferring to have arms and feet to fight with in close quarters. They were standing too near to each other for Slipstream to get a good angle to shoot Windblade if she just kept moving. 

Windblade went for her energy sword, but Slipstream’s punch took her in the jaw and then Slipstream’s elbow introduced itself to her midsection.

Static exploded behind her optics. Slipstream charged. 

Windblade’s back cracked up against the basement wall. It knocked her off balance. She kneed Slipstream in the thigh and grappled for a hold, attempting to throw Slipstream sideways and off her. But Slipstream thwarted her. She was pinned. Slipstream’s ventilations were rapid and furious, heaving through her frame like she’s overheating, like she was walking on a tightrope with an inhibitor jammed onto her back and she could tell she’s swiftly running out of rope.

A slash across her chassis that Windblade had cut into her an hour before still leaked sluggishly. 

It bled onto Windblade. 

Bright pink droplets on red armor. 

Slipstream’s claws dug into her shoulders. Slipstream looked at her intently. Searching for something on her face.

Up until Slipstream had come streaking out of _absolutely nowhere_ and dive-bombed her with a single-minded focus in this latest battle, Windblade hadn’t seen her except at a distance in weeks. There’s been disarray in the Decepticon ranks. In-fighting. Speculation held that Starscream had convinced two-thirds of the Decepticon aerial forces to go rogue. Following reports claimed Megatron had hit the metaphorical roof. The details were still under wraps by Autobot Spec Ops. Windblade wasn’t sure about what was true and what was false.

She knew Slipstream couldn’t have been a part of it. Her loyalty to her faction ran deep and true. 

Windblade had firsthand experience of _that_.

It occurred to her that neither of Slipstream’s two trinemates shared her devotion. 

And neither of her trinemates had been seen for months. 

Windblade opened her mouth. Slipstream beat her to the punch.

“Kiss me.”

The demand, coming from where it’s coming from and in these circumstances, was so far out of left field, Windblade forgot herself. She laughed. Out of honest confusion, out of _are you serious_? It wasn’t a request people make a habit of flinging at her, never mind demanding. Never mind a person who has been nothing but if not consistently frank in their ambitions for her death ever since Windblade had beaten her at the end of the Vos campaign. “Slipstream, what are—“

“Shut up.” Slipstream’s lips part in a snarl, her voice ricocheting off the walls. There was no effort spared towards seduction, no flirting: only spark-deep anger. “Kiss me. Or are you afraid?”

Windblade yanked a hand out of her hold and grabbed the back of Slipstream’s helm. “ _Afraid?_ ”

Nobody’s watching. Nobody’s looking.

And—when it came down to it—it was more a bite than a proper kiss, but Windblade wasn’t surprised Slipstream kissed her like it was a battle to be won, just another clash over the course of their millenia-long enmity. And still, there was the sense that Slipstream was searching for something and frustrated that she couldn’t find it in the kiss.

Slipstream pulled away first.

The anger in her optics didn’t lessen for having been kissed.

When Windblade limped out of the building, Slipstream had already vanished up into the fog. There was nothing to herald her departure besides the deep impressions left by her thrusters in the mud.

Windblade thought of divided loyalties. She thought of devotion gone unrewarded, and diligence going to waste, and the people you can trust to remain by your side, unswayed by others, and the people you can’t.

She leapt, turned her T-cog, and flew to the same clouds that Slipstream had gone.


	8. Alpha Bravo/Silverbolt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the prompt: _Ceremony_.
> 
> The Aerialbots accept a replacement limb with some struggle and Alpha Bravo takes a leap of faith.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains an offscreen character death, paperwork, grieving, spark merge, gestalt weirdness, gestalt voyeurism, and references wartime violence. This is _very_ loosely based on Alpha Bravo’s integration into Superion in IDW1.

It popped up while he was filling out paperwork for his impending transfer to the Autobot elite air force combat training center: _Blah, blah, in the event that an opening in the team is made available, would you consent to being reformatted (see PAGE 239, SECTION 5 for further details) and joining the active combiner unit codenamed Superion, blah, blah, please click ‘yes’ or ‘no’ before clicking on the icon to proceed to the next page_. Alpha Bravo paused, finger hovering over the datapad. His processor pinged him to go back and reevaluate that sentence.

He reread it.

Another consent form. Updating his military paperwork always brought them blinking up. _In the event your body is recovered intact after your deactivation in combat, would you consent to donating your spare parts to the medical division to be reused. In the event of the planet exploding, tell us if you have any pre-recorded messages you wish to be released to your loved ones or the public. For security concerns, please specify if the messages contain any potentially classified material. In the event of you being declared KIA, MIA, or AWOL, who are your closest next-of-kin and what is their contact information? Please insert in this box the name of your endura, spark sibling, carrier, cassette, gestalt, or any other form of applicable relationships if you do not want us to default to your current commanding officer._ There were a multitude of other forms. Fitness forms, medical history forms, non-disclosure forms, forms saying ‘yes, I definitely did read that part of the Autobot Code and didn’t skim through it and here is my legal signature stating I will follow it and not break rules,’ forms for what training he had undergone, administrative forms. Dull stuff.

But some forms only showed up if one met certain criteria and had scored sufficiently high in certain performance tests to warrant the interest.

Like most of the Autobots since they had reverse-engineered the process for the artificial creation of combiners from the Decepticons (and the Decepticons had repaid _that_ information leak by stealing and reproducing the secret process the Autobots had for artificially creating triple-changers), Alpha Bravo had taken the basic compatibility tests to see if his programming and personality rated enough compatibility with one of the combiners on their side to be classified as a replacement limb to be held in reserve. His compatibility would be viewed alongside his existing scores in combat, teamwork, and intelligence. If any of those were too low, even bots with high compatibility would be disqualified. This was not a peaceful time. There was no space in the specialized units for a weak link.

And like all of the rest of the test-takers, he’d gone in knowing the results wouldn’t be made public. There wasn’t much point in identifying potential combiner back-ups if the Decepticons could easily learn which ones they were and take them out in advance.

He had assumed his performance hadn’t scored high enough. He was one of the younger soldiers in the ranks, after all.

But the consent form on the screen indicated his assumption had been wrong.

So, given he had turned out to meet the qualifications required, did he want to? Clicking _no_ was an option.

But Alpha Bravo liked to think of himself as something of a patriot. It had been so dreadfully long since he had seen his beloved homeworld and if he could contribute in any minor way to seeing the Autobots victorious and Cybertron restored and bright and teeming with vigor, like it should be, then he would. 

Alpha Bravo thought it over and shrugged to himself and clicked _yes_ and forgot about it. In all likelihood, it wouldn’t come up again. A strong and experienced team like the Aerialbots wouldn’t need a new recruit or if they did suffer a casualty, some Autobot jet that had scored higher on the compatibility tests than Alpha Bravo had would also click _yes_ on the form, and be called up in his place.

One thousand, two hundred, and thirty-nine years later, Slingshot was ripped from his connecting socket in Superion by Devastator and killed.

A week later, the summonings arrived at Alpha Bravo’s outpost. 

He was to be released from all prior duties and to report to the central Autobot headquarters immediately.

Rotors rustling on his back, Alpha Bravo reset his intake, stood straight at attention, and nervously saluted Silverbolt. “Alpha Bravo, reporting for duty. Sir.”

The four Aerialbots clustered around the table in the room in front of him were not as impressed as he’d hoped they’d be. Their armor was scruffed from fresh damage. The red flier’s optics were so washed out with white and kept sparking so erratically that he looked like he was coming fresh out of a days-long crying session. The sleek black flier had a hand on his teammate’s back, red biolights pulsing soothingly.

“Acknowledged, Alpha Bravo. Be at ease,” the Aerialbot leader greeted him. His white paintjob patterned with yellow and blue cockpit in good condition despite his sad optics, Silverbolt was a mech with one of the larger frame types in the air force and it showed in his root mode’s height. “Given the nature of what you’re being recruited for, there’s no need for us to keep up formalities.”

Alpha Bravo relaxed his spinal strut.

“I thought we were getting another _jet_ as the new recruit,” Air Raid said mulishly from Silverbolt’s left side. His arms were clamped around his chest, white wings hiked up aggressively. Weld marks marred his finish. “You’re a helicopter. We’re not going to spend all our time as Superion. How are we going to work him into our flight maneuvers? Did High Command think this through at _all_ or did fragging Prime just grab the _first_ functioning frame on the list that would do as a replacement so we’d stop moping over Slingshot?” He put up a strong angry front, but his voice wavered on the word _Slingshot_.

Alpha Bravo wilted slightly. 

On Silverbolt’s right side, Skydive said sharply, “If you had read his files like Silverbolt _told_ you to, you would have known that already. Alpha Bravo has the highest scores for _both_ teamwork and combat stats out of everybody who tested as compatible to us.”

“The scores are just theory made up by Wheeljack, none of the other combiners on our side have lost members before so it’s not like they could prove—” Air Raid’s words stopped as both Silverbolt and Fireflight’s helms turned in eerie unison towards him. Alpha Bravo would have said they were talking on commlinks except he wasn’t picking up on the buzz of frequencies being active in the room. The bond then.

There was a fraught pause. Anguish and petulance darted across Air Raid’s field before he forcibly shut it down.

“Air Raid. We talked about this. We agreed,” Silverbolt said gently, “to not punish the newbie for not being Slingshot.” He looked down at his feet. His claws twitched towards the spot on his frame that Alpha Bravo could guess from reading the news attached to his summoning orders where Slingshot had been broken off from the other Aerialbots in the fatal confrontation with Devastator. What did it feel like, Alpha Bravo suddenly wondered, to experience a comrade’s death while you were combined with him? Did it feel like you were dying too? Or was it more remote, like the sensory input coming into your systems from your arm being cut off all the sudden? “I know it hurts. I know it’s not fun. But we need to _try_ and make this no more painful than it has to be. For the sake of all five of us.” Silverbolt held Air Raid’s gaze until Air Raid looked away first, shamefaced.

Fireflight’s wings twitched. 

Air Raid ground his denta.

Optics still washed pale, Fireflight admonished in response to whatever Air Raid had silently said, “Don’t be mean. It’s not his fault.”

Aggression draining away, Air Raid grunted and addressed the air over Alpha Bravo’s shoulder, not his face. “Okay. Yeah. I get it. Sorry, newbie. It’s a sore spot.”

Silverbolt’s attention shifted to Alpha Bravo, standing awkwardly several feet away from the table and watching the interplay without voicing commentary. “I’m sorry about that too, Alpha Bravo. It’s so soon and we’ve had no time to mourn Slingshot. The grief is still raw.”

Alpha Bravo reset his vocalizer. “Apology accepted. Too many of us know how it feels to lose a comrade to the Decepticons in the line of duty. Can I ask a question?”

“Go ahead,” Skydive replied, speaking for his gestalt-mates.

“If your loss is still so fresh, might it be strategically better to wait instead of inserting a new part into your combiner? Give you more space to recover and stabilize your sparks?” The helicopter shuffled his feet. “I’m willing to do my duty as an Autobot, and I’m grateful for you giving me a chance to become a part of Superion, but if you’re still distressed from your teammate’s deactivation—”

“The war isn’t that kind,” Silverbolt said, cutting in somberly. “Superion is needed back in action now. Defensor can’t retake Paradron by himself. And the longer we wait… The longer it takes, the more the wound in our bond will seal over.” Alpha Bravo assumed this was a good thing until Silverbolt continued, “Meaning it will hurt more to open it again and accept somebody new into our gestalt to fill the hole.”

Air Raid tossed his helm. “Might as well get it over and rip the bandage off now.”

Skydive’s expression was pained. He didn’t deny the dire straits of the war effort was the main factor driving the rushed integration of a new Aerialbot.

“Optimus and Ratchet wanted to give us more time—” Fireflight started. Air Raid made a rude noise at the mention of Prime. Skydive picked up a reading datapad from the table and bonked him on the helm. Air Raid swatted at him and missed.

Silverbolt held up a hand. The squabbling among the Aerialbots stopped.

“We’ve covered this ground before. We came here to meet our potential new recruit and test him to see if he can make the cut. That’s—… That’s what we’re going to do.” His optics became serious. “Alpha Bravo. Are you willing to bond with us? Do you want to become an Aerialbot?”

Alpha Bravo matched his seriousness. “I do. I’m ready for your test— _ack!_ ”

Silverbolt had sat down and his chestplates were starting to part. Sparklight came out the widening crack. 

Alpha Bravo jumped backwards, rotors spraying up, instinctively averting his gaze and covering his visor with both hands in embarrassment. He swore he heard Fireflight giggle. Alpha Bravo sputtered, “Uhm, Silverbolt... sir?” Alpha Bravo peeked through a gap in his fingers and glimpsed a bright glow and the curve of an open spark chamber. A heady rush of coolant flushed into his helm. Feeling a voyeur, he closed the gap in his fingers again.

“Our test is you have to open up to us. Me, to be precise. A spark merge. Not a deep one. Just a shallow one. Enough for understanding. For me to see what you’re made of.” 

Silverbolt sounded remarkably calm and composed for someone who had his spark exposed in front of a _stranger_ and the rest of his team. In somewhere that wasn’t a medbay or a berthroom. It felt indecent. It _was_ indecent. Even if the door was locked and nobody else was here. Alpha Bravo’s vocalizer remembered how to work.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Silverbolt confirmed. “If you’re not comfortable with it, that’s fine. Nobody will force you, I promise. You’ll return to your regular duties and we’ll move onto the next candidate.”

Alpha Bravo slowly lowered his hands, mask halfway covered. His processor connected the dots. What Silverbolt and the Aerialbots were asking for was a display of trust. They needed him to _prove_ he could make a leap of faith—to prove his theoretical scores matched his ability to act as part of the group in reality. It must take trust to do... whatever it was... that made Superion one composite consciousness instead of five separate ones.

It didn’t stop him from feeling like a pervert.

But—if he passed, he’d be merging sparks with the Aerialbots anyway when they combined. What was the difference between doing it for the first time on the battlefield and doing it here? Besides the lack of Decepticons trying to kill him. He might not be the fastest in the air force or the greatest fighter. He might never make a name for himself alone. But Alpha Bravo believed in putting his duty above all.

He took his hands down from his visor, focusing on Silverbolt’s face instead of his bare spark, that distractingly beautiful glow. He said, “No, if that’s all there is to the test, I’ll do it. I agree.”

Air Raid’s field rippled in surprise, then showed a twitch of respect. Silverbolt nodded and sat down in a chair beside the table. He pulled up the chair beside him and gestured at the seat.

“Come over here then.”

Alpha Bravo sat down and issued the command for his chestplates to snap open. Sparklight spilled out. Silverbolt’s hands reached out and slid over the edges of the retracted plating, slow and respectful. He didn’t touch the glowing spark. But Silverbolt’s fingers were close to it and little tendrils of light peeled off Alpha Bravo’s core and tickled at those fingers without Alpha Bravo intending it.

The Aerialbots gathered closer without a visible cue, like they were the witnesses to a secret ceremony. 

They didn’t speak, just watched. 

Alpha Bravo tried to keep calm despite his audience. Tried to not squirm at the four pairs of optics stripping him down to the core.

“It must be intimidating, to do this with somebody you don’t know, but if it helps, if you pass, in one hour, we wouldn’t have secrets from each other. We’ll be one person. Not that that makes life with us much _easier_ , I can tell you from experience with corralling Slingshot and Air Raid. Merging with them didn’t slow them down from backtalking me,” Silverbolt said dryly and Alpha Bravo blinked. 

Alpha Bravo looked at Silverbolt, _really_ looked at him as not just a mouthpiece for Superion, unknowable and unfamiliar, but as a real person like himself, with fears and pet peeves and day-to-day responsibilities. And someone Alpha Bravo might just be able to trust with sharing his spark. 

Silverbolt suggested, “Think of this as a warm-up period.”

Alpha Bravo said, “That does help. Maybe I’ll be a rookie Aerialbot, but I can’t be more of a handful than Air Raid is if I make the team, right?”

“You can _try_ but I doubt it,” Silverbolt said, putting a hand on both of his shoulders and Alpha Bravo leaned forward at the same time Silverbolt pulled him in and for a moment, two sparks merged into one.


End file.
